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If there is a minority government, they can put forward bills/policy and it will get voted for by paliament.

Question - If there is a minority government WHY can the opposition not put forward bills/legislation and ask to have parliament vote on it? Surely this is actually more democratic?
If you disagree then please say why

or gravitas.
I am conjecturing a situation where there is a minority conservative government and where there were labour and libdems broadly in agreement about something and want to mitigate some problems for the people. If an opposition bill, which had the general support of one or more opposition parties, could exist whereby it could have almost equal footing with parliamentary time as government bills.

(that might win the support of labour and even some reluctant tories if it were a free vote) that would be given proper time and voted on in parliament, then maybe they might not have coalesced with the tories.

....yes...with regard to exaggerating the significance of whoever can command a majority, but what I was thinking was that one might have assumed that labour and libdems would be in a majority in agreeing to aspects of the NHS and tuition fees, and were they in opposition I would have hoped that Lib/Dem/Labour might have bills regarding these that would possibly also pick up a handful o tories, and thus such 'party backed' bills should gain more respect than a 'private members bill'

BUT the normal conducting of political debate is equally pointless and is dishonest (well it has the people believing different things about what is said) and the answers and understanding that the majority of voters is expected to have is even more niave, childish, simplistic.

it would cause havoc in terms of budgeting under a minority government. Either everything put through by the opposition would have to be proven to be budget neutral, or it would become impossible to run the nation's finances to any meaningful level.

it's little bit like you doing a household budget and signing up to a loan agreement for the next twelve months based on it, but then having your neighbour come along the next week and committing you to spending an extra £300 a week on education for your kids and £600 a month on private neighbourhood security against your will.

That money's got to come from somewhere else - either you have to cut your spending elsewhere by £1800 a month or you need to borrow a lot more cash. Either way, in terms of meaningful planning ahead, your budget's been shot to pieces.

the govs stated aim is to cut deficit.
but another part of gov receives the order, spend less, so they spend less in an area that means that there will be less in employment and thus another area of gov will have to spend more (welfare) and the revenues (tax) to another area will be less. (plus knock on to private sector)

Thus this is exactly the same sort of problem that even a majority government has when it excuses itself from the resonsibility of joining up the causes and effects of all the policies.

So you see, I can see no difference, just another layer of it.

At least the policies that would run contra to the overall plan would get discussed and debated in parliament if they came from the opposition parties

Danny Alexander and George Osborne are ultimately responsible within government (not accountable - note the difference) for everything that affects the budget. They can essentially veto unaffordable legislation before it goes to government, lending a level of certainty to the budget's estimates.

As soon as someone external comes along with a plan to spend £50bn on space exploration, or to replace the border agency staff with lazer-wielding robots and it's voted into law, you've effectively lost whatever budgetary oversight you do have (and I realise that you'd don't accept that it's currently sufficient).

Ultimately, I'm not saying the system we have works, what I'm saying is that the system you're proposing would work even less well.

and the voters are (as a whole) stupid and unaccountable. Whereas the budget is meant to balance (although I would have thought that parliament would have access to non political accountants/bookmakers, who could ensure it all totted up OK

I guess that I was thinking that the lib dems would (cos of supposed sanctity of NHS and no to education fees n stuff) naturally have sided with labour on many issues (if there were a minority conservative government)

I was assuming that the libdems rules out forming a coalition with labour, not because of ideology, but because of pragmatism to do with the widely spread condemnation of labour for the fiscal woes.

And I have fallen foul of imagining the reasons behind why things have happened rather than taking it all at face value.

i would like to say it is the LAST word. but i dont want to make a commitmant that im not sure i can keep......lets just see how things go and maybe I will feel that I can make that commitment to you later on.